


After Hanamura

by Ganymeme



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 05:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ganymeme/pseuds/Ganymeme
Summary: Genji disappears in a cloud of smoke, like a stage-play ninja, and Hanzo returns to kneel at the shrine. It is well past dawn when Hanzo finally leaves the castle.





	After Hanamura

**Author's Note:**

> A short series of strict 100-word drabble (and one double-drabble) set immediately after the _Dragons_ short.

It is well past dawn when Hanzo finally leaves the castle. Around him, Hanamura stirs. He unstrings and collapses his bow and slips away in the shadows and back alleys of what was once his home. He draws the sleeve of his gi back up - of all places, this is the worst for his tattoo to be seen. The front door of the tiny boarding house is shunned in favour of the walls and window. He changes, packs hastily, and departs the same way, keys left on the untouched bed.

The morning hypertrain north to Nagoya is packed with commuters.

~

In Tokyo, he picks up the dogs. The knot around his chest loosens with each bounce of heavy paws off his chest. He lets them slobber happily all over his face before leashing and muzzling them, then its out the door to have a smoke before catching his next train. He has had two coffees in three hours and only now feels truly alert. 

The pipe is almost as much comfort as the leashes wound around his wrist. Smoke paints curls through Tokyo's unseasonably crisp air. He watches it drift, and very deliberately does not think about anything at all.

~

When the hypertrain glides in to the end of his line, Hanzo has travelled nearly the length of Honshu. He is being followed by two people and watched by a third. His hunters do not see each other until he takes them on a winding tour of the historic warehouses of Akita City. Beneath his exhaustion is a prickle of amusement: the Shimada-kai tail startles and flees from the government suit. The suit glances at Hanzo and freezes, their eyes meet. 

Hanzo and the dogs bare their teeth and he flashes a peace sign. The suit turns and gives chase.

~

The rattling old maglev winds through the mountains. It is almost empty, a stark, blissfully silent contrast to how the day began. The sunset is vivid, and painfully bright. Hanzo sits so the sinking sun's red eye glares balefully into his own. The dogs are restless, wrestling beneath his feet. The two other people in the car do not seem to mind, or even notice, so he lets them be.

He is on his ninth coffee and 28th hour. His hands are trembling. When he blinks, or his eyes droop shut, he sees sparrow feathers and shuriken dancing on air.

~

The mountain town was a village once, before the Crisis. Then it became one of dozens of refuge-cities. Twenty years later it is a thriving, chaotic tangle of omnic and human. The dogs perk up as he removes their muzzles, and by the time they pass the omnic-run noodle cart enthroned on it’s street corner between bookstores and sake bars, their tails are wagging: the dogs know where they are.

He would not call it home, but it is one of the two visits he makes each year when he returns to Japan. Hanamura and the shrine first, always, but then second: this. It wasn't always a little wooden house in the mountains, with a clay roof and washi-paper walls. There were many tiny apartments over the years, in grey, post-Crisis danchi.

He knocks, and waits, uncertain if the door will open. It is yet another duty he is failing, after all. The child's bicycle in the garden, the sparrow's nest in the eaves - the images blur in his sight. Mundane. Accusing.

"Hanzo, welcome," Riko's voice is soft. There are new lines on her face, but still no grey in her hair. He steps in, and sheds shoes for slippers.


End file.
